


Love You Like a Love Song

by AlwaysLera



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: 5, 5 Things, 5+1 Things, Clintasha - Freeform, Crack, Fluff and Crack, Multi, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, natasha romanov and steve rogers friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 08:02:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysLera/pseuds/AlwaysLera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha and Steve do not understand modern music. The rest of the team is subjected to their inability to tolerate/understand it. Clint understands a song that Natasha does not. Natasha understands a song that Clint does not. The whole team has feels. Mostly, fluff! banter! Natasha/Steve friendship! Clintasha!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Like. Ever.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a 5+1+1+1. Bonus 5+1?  
> 5 Songs that Natasha and Steve don't get.  
> 1 song that Clint gets and Natasha doesn't  
> 1 song that Natasha gets and Clint doesn't  
> 1 song the whole team gets.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. Nor do I own any of the songs. I mean, I kinda do. I used songs that I actually listen to and have on my iTunes...so I'm kinda poking fun at myself. Don't take TOO much offense to my choices (I couldn't imagine listening to Really Bad Music myself to write this so I had to pick songs I kinda sorta enjoy and might admit to if you give me enough to drink).
> 
> **I shamelessly borrowed a line from a Rennerson interview in this first paragraph ;)

Natasha and Steve had developed a relationship that bordered on friendship if Steve could just figure out what made Natasha tick and if Natasha could just get over the fact that he was the first person she ever met that she could not outlast in any physical activity (when she brought that up, Tony squinted at her and said, “Does Bird Boy know?” and she scowled at him and told him to get his mind out of the gutter. Clint, who was in the room the entire time, had replied that he thought that Steve was rather handsome and that Natasha could do as she liked. She had then scowled at him and told him to get his mind out of the gutter. He grinned and asked her how she thought it got there. Tony had to leave the table because he was unable to handle it like the mature adult he was not).

Regardless, Natasha and Steve had taken to jogging when both of them were in town together and over that first summer, they discovered they had a great deal of things in common. They both abhorred chocolate milk but loved chocolate icecream. They both enjoyed old movies (Natasha failed to reveal that she only got into old movies because of Clint. She didn’t want it to get back to Clint that she actually enjoyed those flicks). They both particularly had a soft spot for Charlie Chaplin. They both liked taking different routes through the city. They both preferred photography to most other forms of art. They liked old music. Natasha preferred classic and Steve liked music from his time, but they both did not understand modern music in the least, nor did they enjoy it.

Unfortunately, pop music was inherent to the culture and they were subjected to it, again, and again, and again. By proxy, due to Natasha’s temperament and Steve’s insatiable curiosity, their teammates were also subjected to their reactions to it. Again, and again, and again.

 

**1.We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together by Taylor Like Ever Swift**

Natasha was trying to avoid the small child and the dog and the balloon and the stroller when she ran off the jogging path in the park, and stepped on a rusty piece of metal. She shrieked something awful and Steve had yelled at her to get down and take cover, thinking that they were getting shot at. Needless to say, they got strange looks in Central Park

Sitting on the grass and staring at the four inch piece of rusty metal protruding from her foot, Natasha glared at Steve. “I don’t shriek when I’m getting shot at.”

“I didn’t know that you were capable of shrieking,” he muttered, examining her foot as best as she will let him. He sat back on his heels, oblivious to the female joggers who are staring at Natasha with vehement jealous all over their flushed, sweaty faces. “It is in your foot isn’t it.”

“Right through the sole,” she agreed. She sighed and said, “I have a tetanus shot. We just need to go home and flush it out. I’ll be fine. I’m sorry we can’t finish our run.”

“You have a piece of metal protruding from your foot. You realize that even you are allowed to have excuses sometimes, right?” Steve pointed out to her as he grasped it and in a swift motion, he pulled it out of her foot. Natasha bit down hard on her lip, her face twisting in pain. He waited until she released the breath she was holding and opened her eyes again. “Ready to go?”

He hailed them a cab home and helped her limp into the backseat. The cab driver got the address, stared at Steve, whistled at Natasha until she glared at him, and then he just cranked his radio and they moved into the bustling…no, wait, it was New York and there were no crises so the streets were jampacked and they weren’t actually moving in the island of traffic jams.

“And now for Taylor Swift’s latest hit, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together! Thanks for listening to 103.8 WQRJ!” the radio blared at them.

Natasha’s head turned slowly as the song began. Steve was staring at her. He said slowly, cautiously, “Is she talking to herself or someone? She sounds like she requires psychiatric care.”

Natasha frowned, puzzled. “The second ever is very redundant. I don’t understand.”

Steve shook his head and looked out the window. “If she wrote memos for us, I’d tell her she needed to edit.”

“I think this is the girl who goes through more boyfriends in a year than I go through dresses,” Natasha said thoughtfully.

Steve raised his eyebrows. “That’s a lot of boyfriends.”

“I’d dump her too if she sang like this all the time.”

“How’s the foot?”

“Not as painful as this song.”

Natasha figured out the words pretty quick and sang the chorus to Steve, flipping her head dramatically side to side with every line. “We are never ever ever getting back together. You go talk to your friends, talk to my friends talk to me but we are never ever ever getting back together. Ooooh, oooohh ohoh, ooooh oohoh, ooohohohoh.”

Steve shook his head at her. “If Barton heard you.”

Natasha froze. “Over your dead body, Rogers.”

“If you’re not going out with her,” said the cabbie, “lady, are you free tomorrow night?”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Or over his dead body.”

“Easy on the death threats,” muttered Steve but he looked mildly amused.

The song ended and Natasha let out a very long release of breath. It took them forty five minutes to get home. Steve helped Natasha hobble into the Avengers Tower. Clint was in the living room with his legs up while he worked on a SHIELD consulting job. His jaw dropped open when he saw Natasha limping.

“You were running,” he told her accusingly, leaping up and scattering papers everywhere to help her. Natasha gratefully slipped her arms around his neck. “What the fuck happened?”

“There was a child and a dog,” she said helpfully. She hopped on one foot to the couch. “I just need to soak it. And maybe antibiotics.”

“You’re a pain in my ass,” Clint huffed. He looked at Steve. “You didn’t carry her back, did you?”

“No, we took a cab,” Steve told him. “I did get to hear her sing.”

“What?” Clint looked amused as he filled up a bowl (Steve didn’t want to know if he’d later use the same bowl to make brownie mix. Some times, he was able to halt his insatiable curiosity and not ask questions he didn’t want the answers to) with warm water and dumped in Epsom salts.

“Dead. Body. Rogers.” Natasha said from the couch where she had propped up her foot.

Steve backed up, holding up his hands. “Is this like totally a death threat?”

“We are never ever ever going out jogging again,” she said, barely able to suppress a smile. “Like ever.”

“I thought we were for forever,” Steve teased, backing out of the door.

“Like ever, Rogers,” called Natasha as the door shut.

The last thing Steve heard was Clint pulling off Natasha’s shoe and cursing in at least six different languages and Natasha telling him, “Barton, it’s not that bad, don’t be such a baby. Oh, fuck, I didn’t know my foot could turn that color.”


	2. Every Night We Fell In Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eurovision. It's like Europe's version of American Idol, but only if you add in a lot of sparkles and foreign policy and age old alliances and particularly poor songwriting.

1.Fairytale – Alexander Rybak

Steve went to a karaoke bar. It was a mistake. It was a publicity thing. Only he and Tony could really do any PR work for the Avengers and to put it bluntly, no one wanted Tony doing PR for the Avengers. He was money and he was media, but he had trouble interacting with the general public lacking in female genitalia or IQs over 120. There had been that unfortunate incident at the children’s charity when a girl he had been flirting with (Pepper was out of the country but this had been complicated to explain later to her) had referred to Africa as a country, pronounced nuclear as nu-cu-lur, and asked him if he had met George W. Bush. If, in the future, he ever wanted to see Tony’s brain explode and him go off the deep end again, Steve knew those three topics alone were enough to put Ironman in a corner crying and rocking back and forth with Bruce giving him proofs to solve as a way of calming him down.

So when Steve came home, exhausted, tired of listening to Don’t Stop Believin’ being butchered by people who genuinely thought they could sing instead of people knew they couldn’t sing and laughed through the songs (those people, Steve liked), he was in a bad mood.

Natasha was on the couch in her pajamas (she had stopped wearing the ones with blue monkeys on them since Tony had choked on popcorn he was laughing so hard. This was a tank top and plain black slacks approach to pajama wear), perched at the edge of the cushions, her face intent on the screen. Clint was next to her, his knee up against Natasha’s back, but he was watching her with amusement, not the screen. He gave Steve a relaxed smile as he entered. Steve was still awed by Clint’s ease in accepting new people in Natasha’s life. Natasha was less accepting of new people in Clint’s life. When Steve thought about it though, he really didn’t know anything about them, any more than they wanted him to know. They were partners, and lovers, but Steve didn’t really know how far that extended (was there anything farther? Like he would know. Like he would ask them that.)

“Eurovision,” explained Clint as Steve crossed cautiously in front of the screen. “It’s this Euro pop show where other countries vote on other countries’ contestants. You can’t vote for your own country’s contestant. It’s like watching foreign policy play out in cell phone votes.”

“Russians vote for Poles, but the Poles vote for Ukrainians who split between Russia and Poland. No one votes for Belarus,” Natasha added halfheartedly, her eyes still watching the singer. “The weirdest people come from northern Europe or from the Balkans but no surprise there.”

Clint ran his index finger down Natasha’s spine, trying not to laugh. “Spoken like a true Russian.”

Natasha’s mouth twitched and she almost smiled. “Shut up, Barton.”

“I mean, Russia’s contestants…” he trailed off and then began to sing a song that sounded truly. Truly terrible. Steve winced at him and Clint winked at him. “Ya Nachnoy Huligan. I am a Night Hooligan. It was a huge hit in Russia.”

“Your country has poor taste, Romanov,” Steve said, watching the Russian contestant on the screen butcher a song that switched between Russian and English.

“Not my country anymore.”

“You’re never ever getting back together,” Clint managed to say with a straight face.

A kid who looked like he was twelve pretending to play the violin began to play, pausing to only sing a song made of strings of clichés, poor rhymes, and redudancies.

“Of course years ago he was younger,” Natasha sighed dramatically.

“That was then,” Clint deadpanned. “But then, it’s true.”

“I thought fairytales were really terrible. Didn’t people lose lives and bodyparts?” asked Steve who came from the Era before Disney.

“If you didn’t know what you were doing, of course you fell apart,” Natasha said loudly, like the kid was making it up as he went and like he could hear her.

“He can’t hear you,” Clint pointed out helpfully. He shrugged. “I can relate to the song. I’m in love with a fairytale and it hurts.”

“Does that fairytale include losing vocal cords?” asked Natasha without turning around.

“You wish,” snorted Clint.

Steve raised an eyebrow at him. “I think he was predicting the future. He’s in love with a fairytale and she’s going to hurt him.”

Natasha stuck her thumb at him. “What he said.”

The fairytale song guy won. Natasha walked around humming the song for a week and threatened to kill anyone who pointed it out to her.


	3. What's about to transpire is a need for medication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's in the lab listening to music. Natasha and Steve don't get it.

**Sex On Fire – Kings of Leon**

Tony had music playing in the lab when Natasha and Steve came in, looking for Bruce.

“Where’s Bruce?” asked Steve.

“Is this music?” asked Natasha.

Tony rolled his eyes at them. “I don’t know and yes.”

“Yes isn’t a location for Bruce,” Natasha said dryly.

“But I don’t know is an excellent reply to your question,” Steve told her, frowning at the radio. “What the hell is this?”

“Kings of Leon. They’re nothing short of musical geniuses.”

“I don’t know. People are watching her and her sex is on fire. That sounds like a medical condition,” Natasha said. She held up a folder. “Steve and I have a physics question for Bruce.”

Tony looked delighted. “Oh, I can help!”

Steve hesitated and said calmly, “Tony, while we definitely appreciate your offers to help us with our consulting job, unfortunately –“

“No,” cut in Natasha. Steve sighed. Tony glared at her. She shrugged. “Bruce got the clearance on this from our employers, we didn’t write you in.”

“Read me in,” Tony said.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Stop watching spy movies. I’m not reading you into anything.”

“That’s what she said,” Steve exclaimed.

Tony and Natasha stared at him. Tony said, pointing a finger at him and backing up to rest against the table, “This man. This man who makes a that’s what she said joke at a very weird part of this conversation. You’re telling me he has clearance and I don’t.”

Natasha stared at Tony. “You don’t play nice with others.”

“I’m sorry, Pot calling Kettle much?” Tony challenged back. “Am I right, Natalie?”

“You’re going to have to get over that,” Natasha sighed.

“Right. Okay.”

“Does the song say that she’s dying? Seriously, is this about a guy having a dead girl fetish?”

“Natasha,” Steve said, looking a little flushed.

“What he said,” said Tony, pointing at Steve again.

Natasha lifted an eyebrow. “So you aren’t going to tell us where Bruce is?”

“No.”

“You’re petty.”

“You’re a bitch.”

“Like I’ve never heard that before.”

“You don’t think I’ve been called petty before?”

“Children,” broke in Steve. He backed up, taking the folder from Natasha who stomped past him in annoyance. Steve gave Tony an apologetic smile. “Thanks for your help. I hope the music gets better.”

“It’s not bad music!” Tony yelled to the closing door.

“I could barely understand the words to that song,” Steve muttered to Natasha.

“I promise you, it’s better that way,” Natasha replied as they went to look for Bruce.


	4. Blowtorches, brains, and properly placed commas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve doesn't think anyone should give a fuck about an Oxford Comma. People are dying in the world, don't you have something better to argue about? He wouldn't lie about something dumb like that.

**Oxford Comma – Vampire Weekend**

Bruce was giving a presentation on a paper at NYU so Natasha was coming as his guard and his grounder. At some point, they discovered she was very good at reminding Bruce how powerful he could be, mostly because he was one of the only people in the world who brought out her fear. Steve came as moral support who could stand somewhere other than the shadows like Natasha would be. They took a car over, one of Tony’s, complete with a driver. It was an awkward ride. Natasha stared out the window. Steve stared out another window. Bruce looked over his paper.

The driver played a song that had a catchy beat, but Steve didn’t understand the words.

“What’s an oxford comma?” he asked.

“The comma that goes in a list of things,” Bruce explained. “You can say, Bruce, Tony, Clint and Natasha are coming to the party. If you don’t put a comma after Clint, Clint and Natasha are coming together. If you put a comma after Clint, they’re coming but separately.”

“Or, I invited the gay male strippers, Coulson and Fury,” Natasha supplied as an example. “if you don’t put a comma after Coulson, then Coulson and Fury are the gay male strippers. With the oxford comma, I invited male strippers and Coulson and Fury. It’s just a more specific way of listing.”

“I need to blowtorch my brain,” Bruce said quietly to no one in particular.

Steve stared at her in horror. “Okay. I get that. But why don’t the singers give a fuck about an oxford comma?”

“They like Coulson and Fury the male strippers? I don’t know. They also say to take the chapstick and put it on your lips,” Natasha frowns. “Where the hell else would you put chapstick?”

Bruce looked up at the ceiling. “People argue about the oxford comma, that’s why, Steve. It’s a big debate.”

“People waste time debating a comma?” asked Steve. “Don’t we have other world problems?”

Bruce smiled at him. “You’d think.”

“But I do think,” Steve replied.

“All my diction is always dripping with disdain,” Natasha noted from the song. She shrugged. “I mean, some lines are good. It’s when they’re all put together I don’t understand it.”

“I don’t understand any of it,” Steve added helpfully.

Bruce thought about walking the whole way to the university. “You’re not supposed to understand it. It’s a song.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Natasha told him.

“Why write a song that doesn’t make sense?” asked Steve.

“I wouldn’t lie about something dumb like that,” Natasha told him.

“For fuck’s sake,” Bruce moaned into his hand.


	5. Reaching out for something just...a little more intelligible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They prefer songs whose lyrics make sense. Or that they can understand. Preferably both.

**The Pit – Silversun Pickups**

Pepper offered to share her exercise playlists with Natasha for her new ipod that she got for her fake birthday in September. Natasha was delighted to discover new music until she realized that Pepper and her had very different tastes in music. Not that Pepper’s was bad…it’s just…no, really, Natasha didn’t understand how a person could jog to that music and not stop to listen to it and wonder how high the songwriters were.

“It’s just not logical,” she explained to Steve, reaching up to fit the earbuds in his ears. He shook his head and she said, “You’ll understand.”

He paused and said, “You should never clean out wounds with dirty fingers.”

“Unsanitary,” agreed Natasha. “High risk of infection.”

“He had a feeling she might WHAT?” asked Steve, looking confused.

“I don’t know. Something ayayayayalight?” Natasha threw her hands in the sky. “I have no idea!”

“What is the pit?” he asked. “Is it a metaphor?”

“But for what?” she asked.

“I don’t think they should talk about it later,” Steve said slowly. “I mean, if she’s giving in, then they won’t talk about it. And this is just weird.”

“They should never get back together,” Natasha said, taking the ear buds back.

“Like ever,” agreed Steve with a smile.


	6. Doing it all and doing everything is redundant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint understands a song that Natasha doesn't get. She whines to Steve.

**Chasing Cars – Snow Patrol**

Clint and Natasha took a much needed vacation after Labor Day when prices were down and people were back to work and school. Clint was still doing non-field work and Natasha had only recently been cleared by SHIELD to go back in the field for them though she had been taking Avengers missions since a week after Loki was sent back to Asgard. They were back to normal, for the most part, but Clint was tired and Natasha was stressed, and they agreed to take a week in upstate New York. It was the most beautiful time of the year to be in the Adirondacks. Tony had a house (read: mansion) and they theoretically planned on hiking, fishing, and canoeing. In reality, they both knew they would be sleeping and having a lot of sex. But hey, goal setting was important and both of their mandatory psych sessions with SHIELD suggested they set more concrete goals in their life.

“I told Dr. Paul my goal this week was to get laid,” Clint told Natasha.

She smirked. “I told Dr. Paul my goal this week was to have sex on every surface we could find in Tony’s house. We gave him nightmares.”

“Are you kidding me? His imagination is wild right now. We’re the best porno he’s ever played in his head.” Clint rolled down the windows of their borrowed car. He sighed. “Forgot the ipod.”

“I told you to check your bag,” Natasha said. She scanned the radio.

“Wait, that song,” said Clint suddenly, catching her hand and pulling it away from the dials. “I like this song.”

Natasha frowned at the radio and raised her eyebrows at him. “Trying to say something, Barton?”

He gave her a crooked smile. “Always, Natasha.”

“Those three words?”

Clint looked amused at her. “Yeah. Those three words.”

She sniffed. “They are said too much.”

Clint said softly. “And they’re definitely not enough.”

They rode in silence for a long time, Clint’s fingers drumming out the rhythm on the steering wheel, Natasha watched the highway fly past them. She sat back and let the wind play through her hair. “But why are they chasing cars around their heads?”

“It’s a metaphor.”

Natasha sighed. “Everything’s a metaphor.”

“Well, yes.” He didn’t take his eyes off the road.

Natasha got the sense she was missing something but she didn’t know what. She pressed her lips together and tried not to read too much into the lyrics. Everything was a metaphor, after all. Maybe chasing cars was an American thing like counting sheep. She thought of different ‘in Soviet Russia, cars chase you’ type of jokes, none of which she shared but she sent them in a text to Steve who replied immediately.

_Those are terrible._

_Not as terrible and terribly awkward as this song that Clint liked on the radio that I didn’t get._

_You should tell him that for you, not understanding modern music is like a medical condition._

_Like Sex On Fire medical condition._

_Too much information, Natasha._

_Gross, no, both of us are clean._

_Still too much information. Stay safe. Turn off the radio._

Luckily, the radio had moved onto a new song about radioactive. Natasha lasted less than thirty seconds before blurting out to Clint, “If they were actually radioactive, they couldn’t have written the song.”

"Metaphor," Clint sighed.


	7. How can you rise with the fall?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha gets a song that Clint doesn't get.

**Let Go – Frou Frou**

Natasha was crying at the end of Garden State. Granted, Clint liked the movie and found it amusing even if half of the references went over Natasha’s head. But it was the last song that made Natasha’s face turn sheet white and she had curled into a ball on the couch, nestling into him like she normally did not, and there were tears on her face. Clint couldn’t decide what was more confusing: the song or Natasha’s tears.

He whispered to her, his finger catching a tear. “Hey, there.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, wiping at her cheeks. “It’s just. Why didn’t I hear this song before?”

“Because it’s obscure and doesn’t make sense?”

She gave him a watery smile and an arched eyebrow. “It makes perfect sense.”

Clint said dryly, “Natasha. I think you’re beautiful and wonderful. But there’s no beauty in the breakdown and you aren’t actually one of those girls who can’t cry and look pretty.”

“Later, I’m going to make you pay for that,” she told him seriously. She sat up and met his worried expression. She pulled her sleeves over her hands and shrugged. “It’s a metaphor.”

“Everything is,” he told her with a smile.

“So is this, then,” she gestured to the tv.

“No one gets into their breakdown,” Clint argued.

Natasha leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. She leaned back again. He looked at her, surprised and confused and suspicious. She said quietly, “I did, when I said yes to you all those years ago and defected. I jumped in. That was a breakdown. They were mishaps I bubblewrapped.”

“You think about things too much,” Clint said after a long pause because he didn’t know what else to say.

Natasha shrugged, slipped back down into his arms and pressed her face next to his neck. She whispered, “I love you.”

That was not a metaphor.


	8. We'll all get by on little victories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint's got a cover alias in a band. The entire team goes to his show. There are feels had by all. It was fluffy and snuggly and full of rainbows and banter and good music.

**Little Victories by Matt Nathanson**

 

They went out as a team to see Clint play in a band that he had joined years and years ago but he rarely played with thanks to his work schedule. He used a deep cover alias to play in the band and Natasha then, by extension, went in with a deep cover too. They had to hold a briefing just to go to a gig. It was as Steve said dryly very typical of them. They would need to get a debriefing too, he was sure of it. The bar was a hole in the wall in Brooklyn, right off the subway which they couldn’t ride because Thor had come back into town and things got complicated when Steve and Thor were in the same subway car. They tended to attract attention.  
Much to everyone’s annoyance, they again allowed Tony to arrange for drivers. Except Tony didn’t want them to go in separate cars so he rented a limo bus. A limo bus. Like that wasn’t going attract attention. As a result, Natasha was fuming because it put her cover at risk, and Bruce looked miserable at being in public, and Thor was going on and on with Jane about how LONG the bus was, and Steve was trying to placate everyone. Clint was already there with his band, thankfully.

They walked into the bar and Natasha immediately ordered a drink. She had it in hand when Clint spotted her from where he was doing a soundcheck.

“Hold up, guys!” he called and jumped off the stage. He slipped an arm around her and pulled her to him, kissing her deeply. It was partially him, and partially the covers they built over a long period of time. Natasha could be shy in public, especially about affection without the guise of a cover, but this cover had always been closer to her true self than she ever liked to admit. Tonight, though, she was kissing him back fully and she already tasted like honey and vodka and her tangerine chapstick.

“Thanks for coming,” he whispered.

“Thank everyone else too,” she murmured back. “The bus ride over sucked.”

“You took the bus?” he asked, surprised, glancing at Thor who was entertaining the bartender.

“Yeah. Stark Buses,” Natasha said dryly.

Clint kissed her again quickly and headed over to say hi to everyone else. He said, “Get front row seats. They’re opening the doors soon.”

Tony said, “Is it going to be crowded?”

Natasha said into her drink, “They’re kind of an underground hipster favorite, if only because they play two shows every two years thanks to his schedule.”

“You have groupies?” Banner looked amused.

Clint snorted. “Something like that.”

Twenty minutes later, the room was packed and hundreds, literally hundreds, of girls were screaming for Owen, Clint’s cover’s name and the lead singer of Pansies Getting Smashed. Natasha was in the front row and she gave Clint a small, exhausted smile. He winked at her.

“Hello, hello, New York!” he bellowed into the mic.

The room was so loud that Natasha could hear Clint’s hearing aids reverberating. She saw him wince, and then take off his hearing aids. He didn’t need them. He learned to sing before he lost his hearing and he knew how to hit all the notes. He reached out to her with his aids and she leaned up over the edge of the stage with an outstretched hand. She wrapped her fingers around the valuable bit of equipment and tucked it into her pockets. Around her, girls screamed and milled, holding out their hands, like he would produce more hearing aids.

Natasha tried not to punch anyone in the face.

“Thank you, ever and always, to my wife Emily,” Clint grinned at her from the stage. The girls cheered, and then paused, and looked confused. He tapped his ear and then signed quickly, “That should keep them quiet.”

She mouthed the words, “You’re terrible,” back at him.

Clint turned around, counted off to his band, and then they began playing. They played a mix of folk and rock, something close to the music that Clint had heard growing up and Natasha found herself singing along to a few of the songs. The others were also enjoying themselves. At the end of the show, Clint said, his voice a little hoarse, “I have a special cover to play now for you all. This is for a few special people here tonight.”

He began to sing and Natasha had to slid back down into their table in the front of the café-bar. She gripped the table as his voice brought warm notes into them. Their entire table stilled as he reached the chorus.

He sang softly, “This time, I’ll have no fear. I’ll be standing strong and tall. I turn my back towards them all. And I’ll be awful sometimes, weakened to my knees, but I’ll learn to get by on little victories. And if the world decides to catch up with me, it’s a little victory.”

The crowd cheered but the Avengers table just looked around. Steve looked teary-eyed. Banner was staring at his hands. Stark was whispering in Pepper’s ear and Pepper was nodding, watching him with open worry on her face. They looked at each other and all of them smiled and all of them exhaled slowly.

Thor said in his booming voice, “Most wonderful do you sing friend Owen!”

Clint grinned and took a bow towards their table.

Natasha waited by the bar while they dismantled the set and as the last of the groupies trickled out after harassing Clint enough that his bandmates did most of the packing and he was trying to get to Natasha for his hearing aids so he didn’t have to keep reading lips. Reading lips with groupies made it look like he was hitting on them and he always felt bad when they took him to be more of a tease than he was.

“Finally,” he exhaled into Natasha’s ear, slipping his hand into her pocket as he kissed her cheek. He extracted his aids and slipped them onto his ears.

She smiled at him and ran her fingers over his chin stubble. “You used me as a storage unit.”

“Yep,” he agreed and kissed her again, this time on the mouth. He pulled back and whispered, “Did they like it?”

“We loved it,” she whispered back. “Now take me home.”

“With pleasure,” Clint replied.

“This is all very touching but the bus is leaving,” Tony said loudly. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Kids on the bus. Count off in pairs.”

“One!” said Thor.

Bruce clapped a hand on Clint’s shoulder. “I liked your music but I liked that last song. Exactly what I needed to hear today.”

“Yes, thank you, that was perfect,” Pepper told him.

“I didn’t know you could sing that well,” Steve told him honestly.

Tony gestured. “Can we fangirl over him inside the bus like real groupies, everyone? And Cli—Owen, I want to talk to you about a recording contract.”

“No,” said Clint and Natasha together.

Natasha grinned. “You aren’t the first to ask him.”

Tony shrugged. “Your loss.”

“I don’t think so.” Clint said with a shrug. As they walked out into the cool fall air, he tipped his head back and stared at the sky, cloudy and light polluted, rooflines populating as far as he could see in any direction. He said to Natasha, “This is the most whole I’ve felt since before New Mexico.”

She took his hand and squeezed it. “That’s what leveling out is. It’s little victories.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I had a lot of fun writing this. (Actually as I was posting it, We Are Never Getting Back Together came on my iTunes. I'm sorrynotsorry.)
> 
> Comments appreciated!


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